D&D (2024) I think we are on the cusp of a sea change.

[Ruin Explorer]

To add to the above, I think one interesting thing is, with Human pantheons, you don't see the same problem as badly.

So this very clearly derives from the fact that non-humans had strongly-suggested alignments. I have no doubt that if Clangeddin was a human god, he'd be labelled as Neutral or even Evil. But because Dwarves are LG by default, surely their gods must be? And you see the same thing with elves and so on.

Then with humanoids you see it again, even reverse. Gods who don't seem particularly awful are Evil, and/or it seems like they had to go out of their way to make them Evil.

So I think this is something that could easily improve. If we remove default alignments from races, then suddenly their gods don't have to be constrained to the default alignments. Yes, Gruumsh is probably still CE because he's a mean dude, but Clangeddin is likely LE, because dude's a genocidal maniac. And so on.

 

[Mercurius]

Emperor Palpatine and Sauron are still evil. Their minions are still evil. What's changed is that now you need to have a motivation for Blorg the Orc to be evil because "Blorg the Orc is evil because he's an orc" isn't a good motivation.

"Blorg the Orc is evil because he leads a gang of sadistic, murderous bandits" is OK. Nobody is saying you have to go into Blorg's history to find out what caused him to turn to evil. You can if you want to, but you don't have to.

There seems to be inconsistency here. Which one is it, does everyone "need to have a motivation" for orcs to be evil, or only "if you want to?"

I mean, obviously it is the latter. Every game can be run differently. If a DM wants to run a campaign in which orcs and drow are evil, that's their prerogative, especially if they have player buy-in.

The core rules are simply clarifying that they don't "have to be" evil, or aren't inherently evil in all worlds. But in some they could be.

 

[Mercurius]

Y'all are missing the point:

 

[Ruin Explorer]

How about Blorg the Orc is a follower of Gruumsh so therefore we know he's evil because only someone evil would follow that god?

I think this is mostly valid if we assume everyone is a willing and committed follower, but it's worth noting that presumably a fair number of people might be neither, but rather worshipping to conform or out of fear of punishment (divine or otherwise). It's probably not something likely to come up much as you're probably going to run into committed religious lunatics a lot more than "I'm only here because they have spice-fried cockatrice wings after the ritual sacrifice!"-types though.

 

[TheSword]

To add to the above, I think one interesting thing is, with Human pantheons, you don't see the same problem as badly.

So this very clearly derives from the fact that non-humans had strongly-suggested alignments. I have no doubt that if Clangeddin was a human god, he'd be labelled as Neutral or even Evil. But because Dwarves are LG by default, surely their gods must be? And you see the same thing with elves and so on.

Then with humanoids you see it again, even reverse. Gods who don't seem particularly awful are Evil, and/or it seems like they had to go out of their way to make them Evil.

So I think this is something that could easily improve. If we remove default alignments from races, then suddenly their gods don't have to be constrained to the default alignments. Yes, Gruumsh is probably still CE because he's a mean dude, but Clangeddin is likely LE, because dude's a genocidal maniac. And so on.

My problem is that this is referencing a 25 year old book. D&D quietly tucked these issues in a crap drawer 15-20 years ago and hasn’t really looked back since.

When was the last time Clangeddin had a meaningful impact in a D&D product?

 

[Scribe]

To add to the above, I think one interesting thing is, with Human pantheons, you don't see the same problem as badly.

So this very clearly derives from the fact that non-humans had strongly-suggested alignments. I have no doubt that if Clangeddin was a human god, he'd be labelled as Neutral or even Evil. But because Dwarves are LG by default, surely their gods must be? And you see the same thing with elves and so on.

Then with humanoids you see it again, even reverse. Gods who don't seem particularly awful are Evil, and/or it seems like they had to go out of their way to make them Evil.

So I think this is something that could easily improve. If we remove default alignments from races, then suddenly their gods don't have to be constrained to the default alignments. Yes, Gruumsh is probably still CE because he's a mean dude, but Clangeddin is likely LE, because dude's a genocidal maniac. And so on.

I'd argue that this is back to that (admittedly old) paradigm where the other races are foils to humanity, not intended to be taken on their own.

 

[TheSword]

I can give an example for him, of something that would be hard to change because of backwards compatibility, but ideally should be changed - 6-8 encounters/day assumption. It's so baked in to 5E that, short of taking the entire game apart and reassembling it, you couldn't fix it.

There's a lot of other stuff where it depends on how far they're willing to go. Like, with subclasses, are they willing to fundamentally change them and make some subclasses technically incompatible between 5E and 2024E? If not, then there are a lot of classes which cannot be "fixed" in 2024E even though they would be pretty easy to fix if you did do that.

I think it all depends on how WotC defines "backwards compatible" or whatever though. If it's absolute, it'll be hugely limiting. If it's just "mostly" or "you can use adventures and monsters without changing them, but PCs may need updating", then it'll be fine.

I do agree that it would be nice if the game could be balanced with single encounter days. But at the same time, I don’t want all casters to look like Warlocks so I live with the discrepancy.

That said, I’m not sure that’s an example of 5e having a good idea and not implementing it. I don’t think 5e ever intended to balance the game around single encounter days.

 

[dave2008]

but then we must ask why is gruumsh is evil?

No, I don't think that needs to be asked. It could simply be accepted and be done with it.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Emperor Palpatine and Sauron are still evil. Their minions are still evil. What's changed is that now you need to have a motivation for Blorg the Orc to be evil because "Blorg the Orc is evil because he's an orc" isn't a good motivation.

"Blorg the Orc is evil because he leads a gang of sadistic, murderous bandits" is OK. Nobody is saying you have to go into Blorg's history to find out what caused him to turn to evil. You can if you want to, but you don't have to.

But really, are there people who killed peaceful farming orcs because they were evil? Maybe I am playing with a gang of outlier, but (a) we don't kill people as much as possible [the GM vetoed by casting of Grease on the rooftop to make an enemy fall while yelling "Gravity does non-lethal damage!"] (b) having beyond-redemption capital E evil lessen the guilt in the cases where it's... unavoidable/franckly too inconvenient not to kill.

So it's not a matter of killing Blorg because he's evil, but since he's a sadistic murderous bandit AND he's evil, it's not that horrible to kill him outside of self-defence.

The whole debate seem totally alien to me and the only way I can understand the problem is if people are really killing orcs because they are orcs.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

My problem is that this is referencing a 25 year old book. D&D quietly tucked these issues in a crap drawer 15-20 years ago and hasn’t really looked back since.

When was the last time Clangeddin had a meaningful impact in a D&D product?

I don't know. Very few gods have any meaningful impact on D&D products.

The point is, because that's the most recent source, it's preserving a sort of messed-up/nonsensical situation. Actually there's probably 3E or maybe even later books which assert Clangeddin as LG, but I am not going to dig through my shelves to check lol.